meisa's lagoon

a most fabulous appetizer. i've slightly altered it from martha's "eggplant yogurt dip", and we've cleverly renamed it mama ganoush.

5 garlic cloves (unpeeled)
4 small eggplants (like the long skinny ones, japanese are they called?)
1 medium onion (half cut in slices, half finely chopped)
1 small container plain yogurt
juice from a lemon (or just half of one, depending on your taste)
1 tsp coarse salt
freshly ground black pepper

preheat oven to 450. wrap garlic loosely in foil. put garlic and eggplant on baking sheet. roast until soft and eggplant starts to blister and blacken (~45 min). remove garlic. broil eggplant until skins are charred (~3 min). cool completely.
whisk together chopped onion, yogurt, and lemon juice. squeeze roasted garlic pulp into yogurt mix. cut each eggplant in half lengthwise and scrape flesh into yogurt mixture. add salt and pepper. stir well. saute remaining onion and use as garnish.
serve with pita (or pita chips) and enjoy!!!

Posted by Meisa at 08:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

don't be a hater. just cause it's the color of your excrement doesn't mean it's not beautiful. well, maybe not the exact shade of brown that is your crap. i realize the color of poo changes from day to day and meal to meal, and maybe some of those browns (or greens - blegh) might be nicer than others.
eh hem. i'm getting off the subject here. the point of this entry is the color brown, not poo.
brown is so rich and beautiful. warm and autumnal. embrace it. love the color of your poo.

Posted by Meisa at 09:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

it worked out that we got second place overall, but walked away with no prizes. in our heat we lost to the overall winners, which meant that even though other teams had longer times than us, if they won in their heat, they still got prizes. we got nothing. and we were about a quarter inch from the fill line of our glass. soooooo close! but we had a good time and the money went to a good cause. but boy were we exhausted! two minutes of grape stomping is sooooo much harder than a half hour at the gym. my goodness!

Posted by Meisa at 09:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

khalid and i signed up for a grape stomping competition to be held this weekend. we will be placed in a vat of grapes and a spigot on each vat will let the juice from the grapes to drain into a glass. and then the first team to fill half a glass of wine wins! we were trying to strategize, deciding what attributes would be best to help us win. neither of us are that heavy, nor are we that quick on our feet. but khalid has like no arch, so maybe that will help. i think the biggest thing we have going for us is our name THE PINOT POUNDERS. doesn't that just intimidate the hell out of you? other ones we tossed around were the merlot mashers or the cabernet crushers.
i'll let you know later if the name is enough to get us to the winner's circle.

Posted by Meisa at 06:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

for everyone who walks, runs, bikes, whatever...
this was just too cool not to post. go, explore the magic of google.

Posted by Meisa at 09:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

every once in awhile when someone random from my past pops into my head, i google them to see what they've been up to. i'm on a quest to find someone else i've known who has a blog, but have found no one. but still, google sometimes gives a few hits that clue me into what my past acquaintances have been doing.
the other day, i was avoiding work, and thought up a character from middle school and marine biology camp (go ahead, laugh, we all already know i'm a dork) - nikolai braun. pretty much after 8th grade, i didn't know anything about his whereabouts. so i googled him and came up with a hit on some summer program at UC Santa Cruz. and sure enough, there was his picture right at the top. as i continued scrolling down the page, my eyes nearly popped out of my head when i saw andrea's picture there as well. who would have guessed that a boy i knew in middle school would have done a summer chemistry program with the girl who would become my roommate in grad school? man, it really is a small world after all.

Posted by Meisa at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

everyday when my mother and i speak on the phone, she says to me, "how was your day?" and i say "okay". and as part of our routine she always says "just okay?" and i sort of testily respond "yes, just okay." i explained to her awhile ago that since i have started grad school, my days here are just okay. and that is good because it means that i am at least staying afloat in the sea of constant failure that is science. i've told her that i have really only had about 5 good days since i've been here (we're talking days in terms of work, i don't typically allow this sort of negativity in the other parts of my life) where i have gotten some really good data or a key experiment actually went the way i wanted it to. but yesterday...yesterday was one of the good days. yay! my thanks go out to chris who ran an experiment for me that finally gave me the evidence i need to publish again. yippee!!!

Posted by Meisa at 09:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

i surprised khalid with a labor day adventure this past weekend. we headed up to wisconsin for a little hiking, boating, and apple picking. we were in hartman creek state park out in the middle of nowhere wisconsin and got to hike along the ice age trail out there which was just so quiet and beautiful. but then the real fun came the next day when we canoed down the crystal river. when i say river, i definately mean more like a creek with water less than 2 feet deep. the protruding rocks and tree branches along our path made for quite an adventure as we tried to dodge them and stay on course. we got stuck a handful of times, i nearly got decapitated by a fallen tree in the middle of some rapids, and then our canoe completely capsized with me sitting in it utterly helpless. i don't remember the last time i laughed so hard. i didn't even have to pee and i nearly pissed my pants. here are a handful of pics from our great weekend.

Posted by Meisa at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

happy anniversary andrea! no matter the years and miles between us, you will always be my roommate. thank you for 4 wonderful years!

Posted by Meisa at 10:42 AM | Permalink